Mixed messages

Have you ever reached over, kissed your dog on top of his head, looked intently into his eyes, and said: “I’m the boss, understand? You have got to learn that.” while he was lying ON THE SOFA and you were sitting ON THE FLOOR?

Yeah, I know. ME TOO.

Scaredy cat

And another thing…

If you ever find yourself home alone for the weekend and also happen to be somewhat scared of the dark, reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the first time in your life is not really a smart thing to do. Leaving lights on all night is a real waste of electricity, not to mention that your boyfriend will never let you forget it.

On the upside, Mina is not a vampire! Yay!

Doggie trouble

Beasties has become very naughty. He used to be pretty good with most other dogs, and only took offence at the occasional large male and the occasional small yappy type dog who would fly in his face. And by taking offence, I mean showing teeth/snarling/lunging to scare the dog off, not actually biting.

In the last 6 months or so, he is challenging pretty much every dog he comes across, and much more viciously. He bit one dog on the nose (it was only a graze, but still – made contact). It always starts off really innocent – waggy tails, no fear or aggression from either dog, few seconds of sniffing each other, and then – wham! Seemingly out of nowhere, he gets aggressive.

He is essentially a bully, and wants to be top dog 100% of the time. Thinking about it, I realised the other day that of all the dogs he has met so far, not a single one actually faced him off – they all back down and slink off as soon as he starts getting aggro (and some of them are 3 times his size!). Unfortunately, it just re-inforces his belief that he can be the boss of everybody. I also think he is worse when I’m with him, as opposed to when S is walking him.

This is all my fault essentially, as I should have spent a lot more time training and socialising him when I first got him. He can tell that other dogs make me nervous, especially large ones, which gives him additional reason to scare them off. I’ve been thinking for a while that it may help to get him another dog, to teach him some manners, but it probably won’t help with unknown dogs, and we have no space in this little house for another one.

Back to some basic training, methinks.

Potato & rosemary bread

Last Christmas, three people, individually and with no collusion whatsoever, each gifted me with a Jamie Oliver cookbook. Luckily, they were three different cookbooks, but what a recipe for disaster that could have been! (Cue laughter. Oh well, I thought that was quite funny.) I wasn’t sure if that was a hint (learn to cook decent meals, woman!) or a vote of encouragement for my efforts to date, but obviously chose to believe the latter.

I quickly and completely fell in love with baking bread. The kneading (therapeutic way to spend 15 minutes, don’t you think?), watching it rise, the divine smell permeating your whole house, and then breaking he crust while it’s still warm…mmmm…heaven.

As I was living alone at the time, I made bread rarely, and when I did most of it was given away so it wouldn’t spoil. Since moving in with S, home-made bread has made a more frequent appearance. Cheesy bread has been a great hit, especially when a mixture of cheeses has been added to the dough. Now that I’m comfortable with the basics of bread-making, I’d love to experiment a little. I’ve been thinking of making sourdough starter, and making all our own bread. But to begin with a smaller experiment, may I present

Potato and rosemary bread

400g potatoes, boiled, peeled, mashed

650g strong white bread flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon runny honey

1 x 7g sachet of dry yeast

300mL warm water

handful of rosemary leaves (from our garden!)

Combine flour and salt in a large bowl. Add mashed potatoes and work them into the flour until you have a reasonably even crumbly mixture. Make a well in the middle.

Add honey and yeast to the warm water and mix until the yeast is dissolved. Pour into the flour well. Mix the flour gradually into the liquid and start kneading. You may need to add a little more flour – aim for a dough that’s elastic but not sticky.

Shape into a ball, place on a floured tray, and score with a knife. Leave 40min to prove, in a warm dry place. It should bout double in size.

Knead again for a few minutes. Add rosemary. Divide dough onto however many loaves/rolls you wish, place on floured tray, score with a knife and leave to prove again for 30-40min.

Bake at 180C until loaves sound hollow when the underside is tapped (about 40-45min for a loaf, 30-35 for rolls).

This is a cobbled together recipe as I could not seem to find a decent one online anywhere. May as well keep it here as it worked quite well, and I’ll quickly forget how I made it! It has a dense cakey consistency which I love, though S still prefers the cheesy masterpieces.

Jam!

We made strawberry-rhubarb jam today! Such excitement! And when I say “we”, S cut up the (ugh) rhubarb and did a bit of stirring, and I did all the hard work. As evidenced by jam burns, or lack of, on certain people.

How did we do it, you ask?

1. Sterilise jam jars (and lids) in a boiling water bath. Ignore peeling evidence of previous occupancy.

2. Assemble all your ingredients.  

3. Yes, alright, including the dreaded stringy rhubarb.

4. Cut up 500g of rhubarb and 400g of strawberries into a large  pan. Add juice of 1 lemon, 1/2 teaspoon on ginger powder, and 600g of jam sugar (that’s  the one with pectin already included for those who – like me – did not know that).

5. Stir. And then stir some more. And keep on stirring. It really helps to break down the  chunky fruit bits.

6. Notice all the foam forming on top of your jam? If it’s starting to look like a bubble bath in there, a knob of butter will sort it out. Really. Trust me.

7. How much is a knob? About a teaspoonful. I think. Anyway, that sort of amount worked just fine.

8. Stir. Repeat ad nauseum. Think the jam is never going to thicken. Add a cheeky splash of bottled apple pectin when no-one is looking.

9. Whoa dude! That did the trick. Thickening beautifully now. Keep stirring. You’ve got two arms, swap over.

10. Lift the jam jars out of the boiling water (yes, you have been boiling the heck out of them all this time. No bug is going to spoil this jam).

11. Pour jam directly into jars and seal immediately. As the jars and jam cool, they will contract and create a bit of a vacuum seal, so you don’t need to do anything apart from screwing the lids down tight.

12. Ta-da! Strawberry-rhubarb jam. Which actually tastes pretty good!

Ex box

I saw my ex for a drink a couple of nights ago. It feels really weird to write that, as I don’t really want to think of him as my anything, so perhaps he should be referred to as that really inappropriate guy I used to go out with. For a very short period of time. During which he broke up with me three times and convinced me to give him another try twice. Going by the old saying of Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me that probably makes me some kind of brainless loser, but I prefer to see myself as optimistic. At least, I did.

Anyway. Drinks. He is probably the only person I willingly argue with, mainly because arguing assumes about the same level of importance to him as breathing. He will force an argument out of anything, just for the sake of being contrary. (Turbulent relationship, anyone?) The fun thing is that he doesn’t expect a bait from me, so when I said I approved of the Tory inheritance tax changes, it was like taking a dummy away from a baby. I would almost feel ashamed of myself, if it wasn’t so much fun to watch as he caught on about 15min into a rant .

He is a person who lives in the moment, and in hyperdrive. His past haunts him and is largely responsible for the persistent rattling of body and mind, giving himself no time to examine any emotion or situation too closely. Yet he is always ready with a quip and a joke, the only person who can make me laugh even in my blackest darkest moods. He is a terribly charming flirt, and during the first few months of my current relationship was annoyingly trying to tempt me into infidelity. He is now in a serious relationship himself and expecting a child (twins at that!) , so apart from one allusion on his part to regrets and what-ifs, we managed to have a nice evening. For the first time, almost three years past that what-the-hell-are-we period, it feels like we could be just friends, and the thought makes me unexpectedly happy. I have always been very good at “accidentally” losing friends – made my life easier to deal with for a time – and that is the one thing I truly regret as I get older. So this tentative resumption of a friendship which began years before we tried to be anything else, feels like a good start.

Here be violins

Stan is away for a 3-day stag weekend. I have secretly been looking forward to this event for WEEKS, gleeful at the thought of three whole days of freedom. There will be loads of time to clean the house properly, walk Beastie, read blogs until 3am if I feel like it, bake, eat all the stuff Stan ignores in the supermarket (mmm, salad), starfish in the middle of the bed, sleep until noon…you get the idea. Not exactly Secret Girl Behaviour, just little things I would do if I didn’t have to consider another creature’s habits and comforts.

Well, the house is almost clean, Beastie has enjoyed some walks, and there are gooey delicious oat’n'raisin cookies cooling in the kitchen. And somehow, barely three hours past his usual honey-I’m-home time, three days is beginning to feel like eternity. It seems so weird not to be spending the afternoon poring over cookbooks  and rushing to get the floors mopped in time (hello, Lucy). The bed seems so vast and empty I’ve had to move to the couch (Beastie thought it was Christmas). Darn it, I miss that boy!

Urghhh

Imagine this: you are driving to work this morning. You stop at a red traffic light – no cars behind you for ages. You have enough time to have a drink of water, and replace the water bottle in your bag, before – bang! – some moron whacks into the back of your stationary car. And yes, the light is STILL red. Luckily he was driving mega slow and left not a scratch on my rear bumper, but seriously! Grrr.

Free agent

The Home Office gods have been kind and granted me the HSMP Visa, which means freedom! Rather than being tied to my current employer, I can now work for more than one company, can change employers as much as I like, and can even work for myself! Basically, there are now options available if I get really pissed off with work. Not that realistically I’m going anywhere for a while, but if anything untoward happens, at least moving on will be much less of a drama.

Cornwall foties

How's that for a puppy with no thumbs?!